Page 49 of The Trouble With Dukes
“I’ve killed with my bare hands, Meggie.” He’d never said those words to another, he should not have said them now. They hurt in a whole new way, leaving sorrow and bewilderment where disgrace had been. “In the heat of battle, true, but half the regiments on both sides saw me do it, and I think the British were more horrified than the French.” Hamish forced more words out, lest Megan think society’s view of him was in error.
“We were to be gentlemanly about our warfare, if you can believe that. Wellington insisted. No plundering the countryside, no firing on the French pickets, and they didn’t fire on us. Battles were orderly in their way—artillery, cavalry, and infantry, in that sequence. You might shoot a man, even an unarmed man, take him down with a weapon, but you didn’t … you didn’t put your hands around his neck, and end his life in an instant when he’s thrown his weapon aside.”
Megan said nothing, so Hamish soldiered on. “I did exactly that. He had no gun, not even his bayonet to defend himself, but he wouldna get out of my way. I put my hands on him, and then he was dead.”
Now, Megan would get up, shake out her skirts, and wish Hamish a safe journey to Scotland. She’d look at him with horror, or worse—unbearably worse—pity. Hamish would spend his entire journey trying to out-gallop the temptation to drink himself to death.
Megan gave him more of her weight, as if exhaustion afflicted her, even so early in the day.
“Does one go to war hoping a fellow officer is proficient at the minuet?” she asked in the same tones she might have inquired about tuning the bagpipes. “Would waltzing have defeated the Corsican? Fine manners? An excellent tenor aria? Skill at whist, for God’s sake? Your fellow officers were likely afraid of you and of their own demises. Their cowardice is not your problem. The war is over, Hamish.”
That queer feeling washed over Hamish again. Part shiver, part warmth, part bewilderment. Wellington had preferred that his officers know how to waltz. On that bit of military lore, Hamish’s resolve to leave the lady to enjoy the rest of her London season without him caught, snagged, stumbled, and … collapsed.
Waltzing hadnotvanquished Napoleon. Many said the entire victory at Waterloo had turned on one Scottish officer’s willingness to plunge headlong through French fire to save the British forces holding a strategic chateau.
The war is over, Hamish.Nobody had said that to him either.
“I hated the battles,” Hamish murmured, kissing Megan’s fingers. “Hated the sieges, the false bravery, the stink of fear, the smell of blood. I hated the noise and the violence. I hated every minute of it.”
But he loved her.Hamish loved that Megan Windham, who was brave in ways his fellow officers would have failed to see, could hear this confession.
“Any sane person should hate war,” Megan said.
Hamish had hated war with a passion, though no soldier admitted that to his fellows.
“Meggie, if I court you, it will be in complete earnest. Not for show, not for a lark. I will offer you my wealth, my title, my family.” And because she inspired courage in him, “I’ll offer you my heart—yours, and yours alone, forevermore. If that’s what you want?”
She sighed a soft, happy sigh and smoothed a hand over his thigh. “I give you permission to pay me your addresses, Hamish, and I will accept nothing less than a courtship in complete earnest.”
He’d never court another. Megan had heard the worst that would be said about him, and was still right there at his side.
“The war is over, Meggie Windham. You’re absolutely right about that. Let the courtship begin.”
Chapter Eleven
You’re very decorous about this courtship business,” Anwen observed. “If I had that much Scottish duke to cast longing glances at, I’d be bribing my sisters to lose sight of me while picnicking at Richmond Park, or to suddenly need a book from the library when my suitor came to call.”
Longing glances had been the sum of Megan’s amorous undertakings where Hamish MacHugh was concerned. Ever since he’d been caught kissing her in the garden, he’d been maddeningly proper, never dancing with her more than once an evening, never holding her an inch closer than propriety allowed.
At Richmond, his brother Colin had been more flirtatious than he had.
“I’m torn,” Megan said, pushing the cover back from the piano keys. “Part of me wants to gobble him whole, Anwen. Another part of me wants to stand absolutely still and marvel that not only do I have a suitor, but I have one I admire greatly.” One who treated her with every evidence of esteem.
Megan would rather a bit more passion and less esteem, though.
Anwen came down beside her on the piano bench. “You truly fancy him?”
Truly, passionately, endlessly—and intimately. “You don’t like Murdoch?”
“He’s impressive,” Anwen said. “Not pretty, not fancy, not clever, not … ornamental. I approve of him all the more for being in want of charm, sharing that characteristic myself. He’ll do for you, but I wish he didn’t live so far away.”
What mattered charm?
Hamish was clever enough to steal back letters undetected, but more than that, he was honest.I’ve killed with my bare hands, Meggie.This battlefield violence appalled the man who’d committed it, while the charming Sir Fletcher had been proud of a scheme that reduced Megan to marital chattel.
“London is hard for Hamish,” Megan said. “Did you notice that when we went out to Richmond, his coachman avoided taking us past Horse Guards? Hamish doesn’t belong to the clubs where former officers congregate, and he’ll never attend one of Wellington’s dinners. I can’t fathom exactly how or why, but I suspect part of Hamish MacHugh is still fighting the French.”
Or his own officers, may a blight afflict the hypocritical lot of them.
